Criterion's Craig Sullivan has explained why the studio ended the Hot Pursuit demo, saying it was just to give a taste and to get "people's feedback".

The team has done their "learning from the demo" and now they've switched to the "production servers". Hot Pursuit is "ready to rock" now.

“The reason is that we switched the servers over to now support the main game. We wanted to put it out there and see what people liked and what people didn’t like,” said creative boss Craig Sullivan of Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit developer Criterion.

"It’s the case that we believe that when we ship a game and people buy it, we have to provide a service, and part of that service is making sure that whenever you’re playing online, or whenever you’re playing with the cable in the back of the machine and you’re connected through Autolog, that everything works really well."

Didn't want 'two versions' of Hot Pursuit running. "It’s our job to ensure the quality of that service. We put the demo out there to give people a taste of what’s to come and get people’s feedback, but also to just make sure the systems are really solid."

"Switching over to the production servers is making sure that we’ve done our learning from the demo; that’s why it was time-limited, and that’s why we’re ready to rock when the game comes out,” added Sullivan. Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit releases on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC tomorrow in the US, and on Friday in Europe. Did you partake of the demo?